


Auferstanden aus Ruinen

by FrauFeuerengel



Category: Rammstein
Genre: Catharsis, Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Nightmares, Past Torture, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Roleplay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-16
Updated: 2019-10-16
Packaged: 2020-12-17 15:35:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,468
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21056753
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FrauFeuerengel/pseuds/FrauFeuerengel
Summary: The filming of “Deutschland” reopens some old wounds from Richard’s past, and mixed with his perception of his own less-than-desirable personality traits, he begins to struggle. He has to relive things on his own terms in order to move forward.





	Auferstanden aus Ruinen

“Cut! Richard, Till, das war wunderbar!”  
  
The guitarist threw down the truncheon hard enough that it bounced off at an angle towards part of the camera crew, and grabbed his ‘victim’s’ hands, hauling the larger man to his feet and dusting him off.

“You okay?” he asked quietly, searching the older man’s face. Till nodded gruffly and held Richard by the shoulders. “Ja. You?”

He wanted to answer, but he couldn’t force any words past the knot in his chest. He merely ran a hand through his hair and over his face with a sigh of resignation as they reset the prison for another take.

Richard kept casting glances over his shoulder at his best friend to make sure he looked more okay than the younger man felt.

* * *

Richard wandered through the bleak grey corridor, trying not to dwell on the screaming from behind the heavy iron doors. Sweating fingers clutched at the truncheon now, and he could swear the thudding of his heart was echoing against the concrete walls.

Every time he found himself here, the same thing would happen. He would open the cell and find the same scrawny kid with blond dreadlocks and an ever-present sneer of haughty boredom and thinly veiled anger, curled in on himself in the corner.

“Steh auf,” he snarled. The punk hauled himself shakily to his feet, and fixed him with a defiant glare, weak though it was.

“Are you going to stand me up against the wall again? Or slam my head into the floor? Or just lock me in a tiny room again until I scream to drown out voices that aren’t really there?!”

He whipped the truncheon across the younger man’s face and grabbed him by his filthy hair, using it to drag him from the cell as he laughed and spit blood onto the ground. “You’re just like me,” he grinned. “Under that fancy uniform...you’re just like me.”

He shoved the skinny little shit up against the wall, driving his fist repeatedly into his stomach until he doubled over and coughed up more blood, crimson running down his chin and dripping onto Richard’s hand. “You’re _nothing_ like me, and...and you’d do well to remember it,” he growled, before letting go of the younger man’s shirt and letting him fall to the floor.

He headed into the guards’ washroom to rinse the blood from his hands, but when he glanced up at the mirror, he saw the same scrawny brat staring back at him.

_You’re just like me._

In the middle of the night, in a comfortably large bedroom overlooking Prenzlauer Berg, Richard Zven Kruspe sat straight up in bed and screamed.

* * *

Till sat behind his desk, propping his feet up and chomping on a cigar as the hammer and compass hung behind him. Christoph was primping in front of a mirror out of the camera’s gaze, laughing at the thought of his commander seeing _Soldat_ Schneider in the formal uniform of a high officer. Richard was dressed similarly, but his demeanor was far less jovial. He fussed with his tie, which reminded him suddenly of an old interview he gave about his escape westward—“I felt like someone was strangling me...I couldn’t breathe anymore.”

He braced himself against the desk in what he hoped resembled a casual manner. His head was swimming and his uniform felt too tight and his _skin_ felt too tight and he shut his eyes tightly thinking _I was just trying to get home I don’t even know what the Neues Forum is I just wanted to get home my head hurts my back hurts my heart hurts I miss Till I miss home what do you want from me I swear I don’t know anything I swear I don’t—_

“Risch?”

He looked up to see Oliver standing over him with a look of concern. “You okay, man?”

Richard shoved past him, past the boundaries of the set, and found a patch of grass outside to vomit on.

With shaking hands, he found a half-empty pack of cigarettes in his pocket and shoved one between his lips to burn away the taste of bile and sheer terror. He slid down the wall and sat in the unsullied grass, resting his forehead on the heel of his palm. The wardrobe mistress would have a fit if she saw, but at the moment, he didn’t particularly care.

He had no idea how long he sat there before he heard the door open and footsteps crunching over gravel.

“Scholle?”

Richard didn’t look up. “What?”

“Are you okay?”

He broke at that, vainly shoving the heels of his palms against his eyes to try and stop the oncoming flood, but they were useless as dams, and the raven-haired man—who had faced so much with haughty stoicism—trembled and wept.

“Nein...” he managed hoarsely. “I...every time I try to eat, I gag on it. I’m not sleeping. When I do manage to sleep, I wish I hadn’t...”

The strange hybrid of Erich Honecker and Till Lindemann, oddly terrifying and comforting at the same time, sat down beside him. “Fuck. I’m sorry, Scholle. I didn’t know. We didn’t know. Why didn’t you say anything? We could have changed how things were shot. We could have brought Ulrike on set to check in with you between takes. We could have done _something_...”

“The only thing that will fix this is the one thing you won’t do.”

“What?”

“Hurt me.”

* * *

Robbed of his sight, Richard had no idea where he was, but from the way the footsteps walking towards him reverberated, he suspected he was in the rehearsal warehouse. Not that it mattered, really, he supposed that was the point. He could have been locked in his own studio and he still would have felt the same.

The unmistakeable crunch of jackboots on pavement halted right in front of where he sat, and he could practically feel the larger man towering over him.

“Steh auf.”

Richard didn’t move. A large hand hauled him to his feet by the front of his shirt.

And then a truncheon cracked against his shoulder blades, knocking him to the ground. A white-hot burst of pain shot through him as his knees hit the pavement, and his scream echoed off the walls.

The same strong hand clamped around his bicep and hauled him to his feet again. “I told you to get up.”

Richard stumbled and tripped over his own feet as he was frogmarched towards a wall. He flattened his palms against it instinctively.

It felt like Hohenschönhausen. It felt like _that_ wall.

He felt sick.

And then he felt Till, his Till, pressed up against his back, breath warm against his ear. “Just give me the names of your contacts in the Neues Forum and this will all be over, Sven.”

“I don’t have any!” He protested. “I’d never even fucking heard of them until you bastards hit me and dragged me off! I was just trying to get home!”

“Liar!” Till roared, cracking his truncheon across the back of Richard’s thighs. He struggled to stay upright, clutching at the wall as he trembled.

“Look...” he muttered defeatedly. “I’d tell you whatever I knew, except I don’t...fucking...know...anything!”

His captor chuckled darkly and stepped back. Richard didn’t dare step away from the wall, even as his shoulders ached and his lower back protested. He had no idea how long he had been standing there, but when he couldn’t any longer and his knees buckled, a pair of strong arms caught him and eased his descent to the ground.

“You’re no better than me,” he said quietly. “Under that fancy uniform, you’re just like me.”

He earned a kick to the side for his insolence, curling up to protect himself from the blows.

“You’d better listen, and listen well: You are nothing like me, boy,” the voice above him hissed icily. “Just tell me what you know. Tell me what the name of your splinter group is.”

“Emigrate...” Richard mumbled defeatedly. “It’s...it’s Emigrate.”

And just like that, the blindfold was gone and Till was wrapped around him, holding him close and pressing kisses into his hair, murmuring against his skin. “I’m so proud of you, Risch, you did so well...you held out so long, longer than I could have...you’re a good boy, you’re my good boy, and as long as I draw breath, nothing is ever going to hurt you again.”

Richard closed his eyes to the empty warehouse (he had been right) and focused on the sound of his best friend’s—his lover’s—voice.

And that night, in a comfortably large bedroom overlooking Prenzlauer Berg, Richard Zven Kruspe lay with his head on a warm, broad chest, and dreamed of stealing a cow.


End file.
